Jill Bolte Taylor

My Stroke of Insigh

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor´s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory and self-awareness.

Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin´ Scientist." "How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I´ve gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career." Jill Bolte Taylor

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist who experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist´s Personal Journey (published in 2008 by Viking Penguin) and was chosen as one of TIME Magazine´s 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2008. In addition, Dr. Jill was the premiere guest on Oprah´s Soul Series webcast and her interview with Oprah and Dr. Oz on the Oprah Winfrey Show was aired on Tuesday, October 21, 2008.

Dr. Jill is the National Spokesperson for the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center and travels the country as the Singin´ Scientist. In addition, she is the Consulting Neuroanatomist for the Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute (MPRI), which uses protons (rather than photons) to battle cancer. Since 1993, she has been an active member of NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness) and is currently the president of the NAMI Greater Bloomington Area affiliate in Bloomington, Indiana.

As a public speaker, Dr. Jill´s presentations are specifically designed for the education of both the lay public and health professionals. Intended to be "Brain 101" presentations, her audiences are made up of people who want to better understand the beautiful human brain. How does the underlying structural and functional anatomical organization of our brain ultimately result in our behavior? How does our brain create our individual perception of reality? How is it that someone else´s perception of reality can be radically different from our own?

Dr. Jill´s presentation style is stippled with both appropriate humor and beautiful slides of the brain. She is a dynamic speaker who helps make the subject of the human brain not only manageable, but interesting, exciting, and intellectually stimulating to a wide variety of audiences:

Corporations and businesses will understand the similarities between the structure of the human body and the structure of a company

As an "Advocate for Humanity," Dr. Jill is a compassionate motivational speaker who speaks from her heart, both as a well sibling of a brother who has been diagnosed with the brain disorder schizophrenia and as a survivor of a debilitating stroke (AVM) which initially rendered her completely disabled.

Dr. Jill has dedicated her career to the advancement of postmortem research into the human brain and to the education of the public about the fragile, yet resilient, nature of this incredible organ. By sharing her science and her unique personal journey, she communicates a message of hope, education, and celebration.

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